Tough Enough - The Beginning
Are you tough enough to survive an emergency situation?
We saw a movie last night where the main guy started out kinda mentally weak and physically unhardened, and as the hours went by, he got physically and mentally stronger, becoming a tougher, more can-do sort of guy. By the end of the movie, he was decisive and capable.
Bull.
One starts an emergency situation with a certain store of mental facilities and physical abilities. Granted, with some people, the first moments of an emergency causes them to switch into a higher mode of existence. All of their unusual capabilities, lying dormant during normal day-to day life, light up during a serious situation, and they burn calmly but exceedingly brightly. That is the exception to the rule, and frankly I cannot wish that you are one of those people, because most of life seems sort of dull and listless in comparison to the times they are ‘at work’.
But even that type starts out at maximum strength, and their strength erodes with time. The same with all of the rest of us. Doing things takes energy. The body simply gets more and more tired as the timeline of the emergency stretches on and on. Mental alertness declines. Strength declines. We get tired. When that happens, errors become more likely. Injuries you could have avoided earlier unfortunately occur because the body is just not as agile as it was a few hours ago.
In a stressful situation, our immune system is on a declining slope. Whatever health you start out with, your body becomes more and more likely to be compromised by disease, the longer you work without rest. I suppose that is the rationale behind making interns work 72 hour shifts. To harden them for times of stress when they become doctors. But as far as I can see, it just creates a permanent sleep debt that makes them sort of nuts, and willing to become shills for the drug companies, and puts them in one of the highest risk categories for drug addiction. If you are a health care professional, let me offer this advice: get some sleep. You will harm fewer of us and feel much, much better.
So now the question is, how to become tough enough for an emergency without turning into a zombie.
I’ll start to answer that next time.
